Good Looks Benefit Men, But Become A Liability For Women

Beauty has always been considered an asset for women, but in the executive suite it becomes a liability.

``Good looks are a benefit to a man,`` psychologist Madeline Heilman said in the October issue of Science Digest, ``but often present problems for women in their climb to the top.``

Heilman and graduate student Melanie Stopeck of New York University recently completed a study that shows attractiveness a positive attribute for a man on his way up the corporate ladder, but a detriment for women.

The researchers asked 113 randomly chosen men and women working in the New York City area to review career descriptions and photographs of fictitious executives.

The career descriptions were identical, except some were ``overnight successes`` who had climbed to the top in three years, and others represented a more normal 10-year success story. The photographs were of attractive and unattractive men and women.

The 113 people were given questionnaires and asked to rate the factors responsible for the executives` success -- luck, ability, effort -- and to choose among adjectives describing them.

The results, reported in the Journal of Applied Psychology, were:

(BU) Handsome male executives were perceived as having more integrity than less attractive men. Their success was attributed to effort and ability.

(BU) Attractive women executives were considered to have less integrity than unattractive ones and their success was attributed to factors such as luck, not to ability.

(BU) All unattractive female executives were seen as more capable and having more integrity than attractive women.

``Attractiveness enhances gender characteristics,`` Heilman and Stopeck said in explaining why attractive women are not thought to be capable. ``An attractive woman is perceived to be more feminine and an attractive man more masculine than their less attractive counterparts.``

An attractive, therefore more ``feminine,`` woman has an advantage in traditionally female jobs but appears to lack the ``masculine`` qualities needed for a traditionally male job.

The result is a trivialization of ability. Psychologists say someone who is expected to succeed and does is credited with ``internal resources,`` primarily ability. If the same person fails, it is attributed to factors beyond his control.

A person branded a ``loser`` in a given situation -- a woman who is expected to fail -- can`t win. If she succeeds, her success is likely to be attributed to luck or circumstance, not ability. If she fails, she is thought incompetent.

The discrimination based on looks extends into politics.

``When the only clue is how he or she looks, people treat men and women differently,`` said Anne Bowman, a political scientist at the University of South Carolina.

Bowman recently conducted a study on the effect of attractiveness on political candidates, published in the journal, Women and Politics.

She asked 125 undergraduate students to rank two groups of photographs, one of men and one of women, in order of attractiveness, telling them they were political candidates. They were asked to rank them again, in the order they would vote for them.

Attractive men won over unattractive men by a landslide, Elizabeth Horton wrote in Science Digest, but the women who had been ranked most attractive invariably received the fewest votes.